


He Blinded Me With Archaeology

by novembersmith



Category: Indiana Jones
Genre: Academia, Geeky, Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-23
Updated: 2009-12-23
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:56:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/pseuds/novembersmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Translating's going slowly," Dr. Jones said, looking at him over the top of his glasses. "But it's coming along. I don't work miracles, kid, don't rush me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	He Blinded Me With Archaeology

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JCrewGuy](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=JCrewGuy).



> I kind of meandered off from the original prompt, but hopefully this fulfills the spirit of it! Additional warnings, besides the obvious incest one (although neither character is aware they're commiting incest, it should be said): I have a total geek love for archaeology. Beware. There be academic rambling within.

Mutt poked himself in the arm experimentally. He was pretty sure that was a bruise coming up on his bicep. Maybe another on his waist. He kinda wanted to pull off his coat and check in the mirror above the mantle, but that wasn’t exactly subtle, not with the guy who’d given him the bruises sitting right there. Dr. Jones didn’t look at all like a someone who’d slip a hand under someone else’s jacket during a high speed motorcycle chase; at the moment he was practically exuding book dust, all tweed and wire-rim glasses and frumpy studiousness, flipping through giant text books and muttering to himself.

But during the chase, he’d been barking orders and his hands had been like flipping bands of iron, especially when Mutt took a turn he didn’t approve of or gave the engine an extra bit of throttle in a crowded room. Mutt kinda had to wonder about the guy’s intentions; sure, they were being chased by a couple of Commie bastards, but that was no reason to sit quite so close on the bike, tucked up against the curve of Mutt’s spine.

Probably Mutt was probably reading too much into it; the guy had just been trying to keep from being dragged back off the bike and through a car window again. Still, there had been something about the way the professor's hand had curled around his waist that made Mutt wonder, and the possibilities were oddly intriguing. Mutt stared at himself in the mirror a moment longer. What the hell, there was nothing else to do in this joint. Might as well test the theory, right?

 "Hey, professor," Mutt said, leaning a hip against the desk and crossing his arms over his chest, licking his lips experimentally—Dr. Jones looked up from his sprawl of notes and textbooks, frowning, clearly annoyed to have been distracted from his work, and wow, Mutt felt like a moron. Why’d he thought the professor would be into him, again? Mutt had seen the way those preppy bastards in the library had looked, spotless and fresh-faced and studious, all staring up at the old man with expressions ranging from alarmed admiration to outright worship. Dr. Jones probably had squares flinging themselves at his feet constantly, making offers Mutt couldn't hope to match with motor oil still beneath his fingernails and grease in his hair.

"Just, uh, wondering how the translating's going," Mutt mumbled, smoothing a hand over his hair and not meeting Jones' eyes. Shit, he was back to pacing uselessly around the room again. Waiting again. Always waiting. Waiting to hear back from Ox, from his mom, waiting to find out what happened, waiting for Dr. Jones to finish translating, waiting waiting waiting. Mutt wanted to _go_.

He’d already poked through most of the books spilling off the shelves, flipped through a few, even, but he was way too worked up at the moment to pay them decent attention – it was like everything was Mayan to him right now, no English anywhere. And earlier he’d gone over to the piano and teased out the opening notes of  “Blueberry Hill,” but Dr. Jones had given him a death stare. Mutt had to finish playing the song after that, obviously, but it wasn’t like he was the world’s best piano player – which Dr. Jones had kindly pointed out, thanks ever so for the tip, Doc. Mutt had quit taking lessons at fourteen; even a cherry ride rusted after that long off the road.

“Translating’s going slowly,” Dr. Jones said, looking at him over the top of his glasses. “But it’s coming along. I don’t work miracles, kid, don’t rush me.”

And that was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it. They needed that letter translated yesterday and here Mutt was, trying to distract the professor from his work when his mom and Ox were somewhere in Peru, fucking held captive by goddamned Russians, and who knew what the fuck was happening to them right now, at this moment, while Mutt loafed around the study and did nothing. If Mutt thought about it too hard, he’d start punching things. And the doc had a lot of nice shit in here, real quality stuff – globes and wooden masks and delicate carvings, shit that Mutt probably should strive not to destroy if he wanted to reach the ripe old age of twenty un-maimed.

He’d been strung tight ever since Ox had failed to send Mutt his birthday letter three months ago – the man always managed to get out a huge, painfully boring missive every year, had done so ever since Mutt was a little tyke, barely able to string together his ABCs, let alone decipher a twelve page epistle about Caesar Augustus and tourniquets. And whether it was from the Russian steppes or from right goddamned next door, Mutt always got a letter. He hadn’t actually been that worried about the Ox until the letter hadn’t shown up on his birthday. Or the week after. And it still hadn’t shown, and still hadn’t shown, and Ox would never just forget Mutt’s birthday, not in a million years. Something was wrong. 

Now his mom was missing too, and he just couldn’t get off that frantic edge of fear and rage and worry. And then the professor had been clinging to him on the bike and Mutt’d realized it’d been at least a month since he’d been so close to another person. Pressed tightly together, taking sharp abrupt curves and dodging Commies and prep students, speeding fast as he dared through protesters and in and out of buildings. Mutt still had a fucking adrenaline rush from it all, and it had nowhere to _go_.

Oh, great, now the professor was looking at Mutt like he’d been dropped on his head as a toddler – which was fair, actually, since Mutt had been standing there staring dumbly for a while now. Mutt tried to scrape up some sort of conversation that didn’t sound like, ‘I was wondering if you wanna fool around, mess up your upholstery a bit?’ Because even if they weren’t going to, Mutt didn’t think he could stand the quiet any longer. A lecture on lost cities and aqueducts and mystical skulls would be way better than pacing around and going out of his _own_ goddamned, very-much-not-crystal skull. And anyway, he actually had a legit question to ask, now that he’d pulled his mind out of the gutter.

"The Ox taught me a bit of hieroglyphics and, um, cuneiform? And, I mean, that stuff looks like it should work the same way, right?" He waved a hand at the enigmatic letter he’d spent a few frantic days trying to decipher on his own – why bring someone else into it if he could solve this shit on his own, right? "I figured it was some sort of Incan thing, but it's all gibberish, man, I didn’t get anywhere when I tried." 

The professor had a strange expression on his face now –wasn’t expecting a drop-out greaser like Mutt to even know what cuneiform was, probably. Well, it wasn’t like Mutt didn’t have smarts – he just put them to better use in the real world, doing real things. He’d seen what the Ox had become, a tweedy walking dictionary, and no way was that going to be Mutt’s future.

 Still, Dr. Jones had handled himself like a boss in that fight, so maybe academics weren’t all wet rags.

"Huh," Jones said thoughtfully, looking up at Mutt, and then, "Pull up a chair." Mutt blinked, and then scrambled to drag one of the heavy armchairs over from the window, hauling it next to the desk. "Closer, kid. I don't bite."

Mutt looked over at the professor, surprised, but he’d already turned back to his notes and was thoughtfully tapping a finger over one of the mysterious drawings. So probably not a come-on, then, which was definitely a bummer.

“Yeah, well, I can stand to take a few bites,” he still said, because whatever, he wasn’t intimidated by an old fogey, even if the old fogey was apparently both brilliant and had a right hook that sent Russians reeling. The professor just ignored him though – well, Mutt thought he saw the guy’s mouth tighten a bit, he didn’t pitch a fit or nothing, didn’t even look up when Mutt edged closer. 

"Well, logographic glyphs represent a distinct morpheme, you remember all that?” Jones asked gruffly, shuffling his papers around.

“Well, yeah,” Mutt said, snorting. “It’s a picture representing an idea instead of a sound. Not exactly a hard concept to grasp, gramps.”

Jones grunted, slanting a look at Mutt that may possibly have been grudgingly impressed, which Mutt was taking as a win – see, Doc, the kid knows more than just how to ride a bike.

“Well, that’s a start. Anyway, there are several cultures that used logographic writing systems. The hieroglyphs the Egyptians used originated as morphemes, even though they developed into a phonetic system later, same goes for the Akkadians. Mayan glyphs use a similar foundation, but I'm not surprised you couldn't make heads or tails of it. Just reading the glyphs takes years of training, for one thing." He looked up from shuffling through his notes just in time to see Mutt roll his eyes, and snorted. "Kid, it's just the facts. Can’t learn this stuff in a garage, and there’s not a book out there for everything. Sometimes you need a teacher. Anyway, I suppose it's not entirely your fault you couldn’t make out here, since -- well, let me show you. These are Mayan glyphs. Classic Yucatec script, to be exact. See this passage here?"

Mutt shifted forward in his chair, trying not to squirm too much when their legs touched -- he doubted the old man even noticed.

"These two glyphs," Dr. Jones said, tapping on two that looked like a baby dragon head being chased by a snail, “placed next to each other signify something to the effect of ['so it says on his bones.'](http://research.famsi.org/montgomery_dictionary/mt_entry.php?id=1350&lsearch=ch&search=bone)” Then the professor rattled off a low phrase in what Mutt assumed was Mayan.

Mutt blinked and bit his lip. Damn, he’d always had a thing for languages – there’d been this French chick at Harvard, before he’d gotten kicked out, and man, just having Brigitte murmur foreign nonsense in his ear turned his crank, way more than he’d ever expected. He had always known that kink was going to come back and bite him in the ass one day. He tugged at his collar and tried to keep focused on the conversation.

Dr. Jones gave him a funny look and then apparently dismissed Mutt’s twitchiness as irrelevant. “Anyway, when you look at the rest of the surrounding glyphs, it’s just random strings of words: flying cacao, golden dirt, tributes eaten by the headdress. This _is_ gibberish, kid, even if you know Mayan, but only if you don’t know what Ox is doing.” Jones grinned and shook a few papers in Mutt’s face. “He’s using a dead language to phonetically approximate _another_ dead language! I doubt there’re more than a handful of people alive today that could work their way through this letter. It’s crazy, but genius."

Mutt frowned, leaning over the desk and shoving at the stack of open books until he found one that looked vaguely familiar, a layout of an alphabet he'd seen floating around Ox's office somewhere. He bounced his leg, scowling down at the figures and trying to pin down the thought tickling at the edge of his mind. He felt Dr. Jones' leg hard and solid against his own for a few more seconds before he realized what he was doing. Whoops. Well, Dr. Jones had a classy chassis for an old man, it was distracting. And embarrassing. Anyway, now wasn’t the time, especially when he had no hope of getting a little under-the-collar action anytime soon. He stared at the book, at a squiggle that looked like a demented tadpole, and it finally hit him.

"Hold up,” Mutt said smugly, pleased he could actually contribute something worthwhile to the conversation. “Thought you said these were, um, ideograms, not phonemes? Pictures that represent ideas, not syllables, right?"

Dr. Jones blinked and then cocked his head. "…right. Guess you were paying attention. But! It just so happens the Mayans _also_ used a number of syllabic glyphs to modify their ideograms. That's what Ox was doing, using the syllabic system to alter the logograms. It's not that simple, though, I'm having to extrapolate based on how the Ch'ol and Yucatec dialects used different glyphs for the same word. See, if you look at the Ch’ol glyph for bone—" Dr. Jones leaned over Mutt and picked up a worn brown book from a teetering stack, and his hair brushed against Mutt’s face. He was that close, smelling like sweat and spice and ink, and that was just it, Mutt’s cock had apparently had enough and wow, this so wasn’t the time. Dr. Jones might look down at any moment and see and oh God, Mutt had to get out of here.

"Yeah, uh, that sounds – hard. I'll leave you to it," Mutt said, scooting his chair backwards and leaping awkwardly to his feet. The professor glanced up, startled expression on his face, and Mutt immediately spun around, blushing. “I’ll just – just go keep a lookout, make sure those Commie bastards don’t show back up, yeah?” He didn’t look back to see what the professor thought of this, just headed over to one of the windows in the next room and leaned his forehead against the cool glass.

Wow, okay. Unexpected. Here he was threatening to poke an eye out with the stiffie he was sporting, and it was over a guy that not six hours earlier he’d considered a total outdated square. But fuck, Mutt couldn’t stop thinking about it, couldn’t stop wondering. He didn’t know if _he_ could have pulled off some of the stunts the professor had managed that afternoon, leaping from a moving car to the back of a motorcycle, punching out a couple Russian thugs on the way, and then he’d taken the slide through the library way fucking better than Mutt had, cool as a cucumber all the way through, answering kids’ questions like it was a regular stroll through the classroom.

Plus, even the Ox, whom Mutt loved with every fiber of his being, could still make the freaking death rituals of Kali-Ma sound dull as dirt. But Dr. Jones lit up as he talked, as if words carved in stone a thousand years ago was something to be jazzed about. It made Mutt remember why he’d kept letting his mom sign him up for school after school – he did actually like learning about old dead languages, once he got his attention focused on it, liked puzzling out details about long-dead civilizations. He just fucking hated classrooms and being surrounded by preppy, socialite twats that didn’t know their dicks from their dipsticks, couldn’t change a tire much less hold their own in a fight.

Not so much an issue with the old man, Mutt thought, daring a glance back at Dr. Jones, who was tapping a pen absently against his lips and flipping through what looked a lot like a kid’s picture book . Mutt would have gone closer to check, but really, he kind of needed the time to pull himself together. At least the doc probably hadn’t noticed anything amiss – he was totally absorbed in his work.

 Mutt sighed and settled in for a long wait.

***

Mutt finally went in search of a kitchen a few hours later, and when he returned with grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches – he’d scraped the mold off the bread and cheese, and found the tomatoes growing in a weedy sprawl in the garden, the man’s kitchen was seriously like a biohazard zone – he was surprised to find Dr. Jones on his feet and looking out the window. He turned at Mutt’s startled noise, and grinned like a madman.

“Got the bastard!” he said waving the letter in the air victoriously. “You see, it’s all down to the diagonal stresses on the -- oh, sandwiches. Is it lunchtime already?”

“Uh, more like dinnertime, compadre,” Mutt said bemusedly, perching on the arm of one of the sofas and watching Jones rapidly demolish most of the food, explaining how he’d translated the letter in between bites.

So apparently Oxley had written them a damn _riddle_ to Akator’s location, and they had to follow ‘the lines only the gods could see.’  Mutt didn’t like it. It wasn’t the Ox’s style, riddles. Long-winded, circumlocutious ramble, sure. But riddles? Oxley didn’t see the point in word games, not usually, and hadn’t he already taken enough precautions with that whole dead-language-within-a-dead-language thing?

The professor was busy rattling on about Napa or Nazca or something, flipping through his books again, so Mutt just slouched against the wall and brooded for a while, tried to keep his tough face on and to stop thinking of Ox – solid, staid, square as a brick Ox – ranting and raving and scribbling down riddles.

He noticed the rambling had ceased and when he looked up Jones was right next to him, holding out a book with glossy photographs of some weird lines drawn all over the ground – right, those Nazca lines. The god lines.

“You okay, kid?” Jones asked, raising an eyebrow.

Mutt took the book and stared down blankly. Yeah, Ox would have gone nuts for this stuff, would have probably put Mutt to sleep in three minutes or less. And then his mom would’ve lectured him on at least attempting to be polite, like she wasn’t the exact same way when the Ox got a good ramble going, passing out on Mutt’s shoulder and drooling for all she was worth.

“Fine,” he replied, swallowing the tight feeling in his throat. “Just, you know, not a huge fan of flying, I guess. Prefer my wheels on the ground, y’know?”

“You’re free to stay behind,” Jones said, looking like he knew Mutt would never go for that and was offering just to needle Mutt just that little extra bit more. Mutt wanted to stay cool, but he couldn’t help himself, bristled automatically.

“You’re kiddin’ me, right?” he sneered. “That’s my mother down there, I’m going. I just don’t have to be happy about it, get me?”

“Whatever you say, kid,” Jones replied, smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “Makes you feel any better, I’ve taken a lot of plane trips in my day – it’s probably about as safe as that motorcycle of yours.”

“Yeah, only a lot higher up,” Mutt grumbled, wishing he hadn’t said anything. He shoved his hands in his pockets. “What now, we ready to go yet, Doc? Oh, and we’re taking my bike, right? I’m not leaving it here, and that’s final, I’ll tell you that now for free.”

“Kind of a big security blanket,” Jones noted and this time Mutt managed to bite back his growl of outrage, settling for glaring stonily. Damn professor just smirked and headed for the door.

“I’m going to get changed and repack some things,” he said over his shoulder. “You need to pick up anything before we go?”

“I need anything special?” Mutt asked, restless again. He picked up an arrowhead, peering at the suspicious-looking stains on the edge, then put it down again and stuck his hands back in his pockets. “I got my passport with me, couple changes of clothes in a locker by the Y, if that counts.”

“Good, didn’t think you’d fit into my clothes,” Jones called back nonchalantly, and damn, but that guy had no idea what he was doing to Mutt – if he had, he’d never have offered something like that. It was kind of reassuring, though. At least Mutt wasn’t being too obvious.

***

The first flight was bad enough – Mutt spooking at every noise from the engines and hideously aware of just how far up they were and the fact that they were in a giant metal death trap. But the second flight, holy mother of every deity ever born. Tiny and cramped and full of traumatic clanking and sputtering noises from the wings, no other passengers and only a tiny metal bench to sit on. Also, Mutt sincerely suspected the pilot was drunk off his ass on something – possibly gin, based on the smell.

He did his damnedest not to show how upset he was, though – he wasn’t going to embarrass himself in front of Indiana (“Look, kid, I have a name – try it some time.”) Jones, not when Mutt had already said he could handle this. And he _could_ fucking handle this, he would, he had to – his mom and Ox were probably going through way worse, and people flew in planes all the time. No sweat.

The metal bench squeaked beneath his fingers, and his knuckles were white from clutching it for all he was worth, like holding on to something solid meant anything all the way up here in the stratosphere. He stared longingly at his bike, secured a few feet away in wooden scaffoldings. At least on her, he was in control and had familiar, beloved pavement beneath him. Not like this, not when he could plummet at any second, any goddamned second, could feel every air pocket and gust of wind the plane hit. This plane was so fucking tiny, a seagull could sneeze and send the thing spinning off course, he was sure of it, and it was like he could feel the panic crawling up from his stomach into his throat, choking him…

And then a hand closed around the back of his neck, warm and dry, solid, holding him still. Mutt hadn’t even realized he’d been trembling.

“Take it easy,” a low voice murmured. “You’re doing great, kid.”

Mutt managed a laugh. “Could be doing better,” he admitted grudgingly, taking a deep breath and prying his hands off the bench, flexing his fingers gingerly.

“So you _really_ don’t like flying,” Indiana said, hand still on Mutt’s neck. He was slouched against the wall, legs splayed out and hat tilted down over his face.

“What, you thought I was pulling your chain?” Mutt said, scowling, and then subsiding as Indiana squeezed warningly, fingers digging into the tendons and pulling Mutt’s back slightly. “No, I don’t –” jeez, did he really have to talk about this? “—I don’t have any problems with heights, you get me? It’s just – this ain’t normal, and I got no idea what’s going on, what the pilot’s doing–”

“I get it,” Indiana cut him off, moving his hand off Mutt’s neck and laying further back against the wall – Mutt did his best not to lean after it. Luckily he was too freaked out to need to worry about any untoward reactions taking place down south. “Still. You should look into getting a pilot’s license, kid.”

Well, that was just fucking ridiculous, but Mutt didn’t really feel up to articulating the violent opposition he felt was necessary at the moment.

“So do you know how to fly?” Mutt asked, forcing himself to slump a bit, mimicking Indy’s posture as best he could with his spine still crackling with tension – or maybe that was just the plane’s hull buckling.

“Enough to survive a crash landing,” Indiana answered placidly from beneath his hat, crossing his arms over his chest and looking ridiculously, obnoxiously comfortable. Probably one of those annoying guys that could sleep anywhere, even a warzone. “And seriously, I bet you a shiny crystal skull you’d take to it. It’s not so different from a car or a bike. You’ll be doing barrel rolls before you know it.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t mention barrel rolls right now,” Mutt got out, queasy at the very thought, and Indiana nudged him with his foot.

“Tell me about Ox,” Indiana mumbled, his eyes mostly closed. “Haven’t seen the guy in twenty years.”

“Well, that’s about how long I’ve known him,” Mutt said, crossing his arms and hugging himself uneasily as the plane dipped again. It was cool, that bump had just been a pocket of air, nothing to worry about. Now would be a good time for a quick fumble, Indiana all sprawled out like that and lazy, it’d be so great, but Mutt wasn’t going to embarrass himself, even if he could really, really use a distraction.

Ox, right, talk about Ox.

“Ox’s great,” Mutt said, voice low and shaky. “Guy practically taught me how to read, y’know? I was babbling shit about the Egyptians before I knew how to walk, almost. He and my mom, they’re tight, always have been, she’s real good at getting him to cut to the chase, which believe you me is a life skill around the Ox,” he snorted, remembering coming by the college to meet Ox after one of the guy’s archaeology lectures and finding the class running overtime by half an hour and all the kids slumped and comatose in their seats as Ox rambled merrily and obliviously on up at the chalkboard.

Mutt cautiously leaned back against the plane’s wall and closed his own eyes. “ When I was little, he used to help put me to bed, taught me to ride a bicycle, all that good stuff – I mean, when I got older he wasn’t around as much. Had to do fieldwork. Guess you know how that goes. But whenever Ox gets back into town we meet up for lunch every coupla days at this little Greek place.” He shifted a bit, rolling his neck. Man, he could go for some falafel right now, and a huge glass of Coca-Cola, fizzy and ice-cold. That’d hit the spot. “I’ve been going there my whole life, and the spanakopita’s apparently better than you’ll get anywhere outside the Mediterranean. Always wanted to test that one day, right? Go see Athens and all, try the food there and see how it measures up. But motorcycles don’t pay that good, and then there’s that plane thing. Anyway. We eat our tabouli and baklava, and then Ox always, and I mean always, has a couple books for me, about the weirdest shit, honestly, and some of them would be huge, I’m talking drop it on your foot you break a toe  huge, and he’d still expect me to have them read in two days. Crazy guy, you know?”

He opened his eyes when there was no response and saw Indiana stretched out on the bench with his hat tilted down over his eyes and his mouth slightly open, clearly asleep. Asshole. Still, Mutt had gotten a little bit more accustomed to the motion of the plane while he was talking – not so bad, he guessed, kinda like falling asleep in the back of Ox’s car when he was driving around downtown Chicago with all those potholes everywhere. He still bolted upright whenever there was an especially loud clunk or dramatic dip of the wings, but he managed to catch a few winks here and there.

By the time they switched planes at Mexico City, he was feeling almost blasé about the whole flying thing. He still couldn’t totally relax, but he kept himself busy making sure the hemp ropes holding his girl to the wooden frame were still intact, that she wasn’t getting any nicks in her paint job. Indiana seemed amused by Mutt’s fretting, watching Mutt with hooded eyes as Mutt bent over his baby and rubbed worriedly at a spot on her bumper with the hem of his shirt. Of course, then the guy drifted off again.

Turned out that hours upon hours trapped in a soaring steel sardine can got less terrifying and more boring over time, especially after Indiana conked out and there was no one to talk with – Mutt sure as hell wasn’t bothering the pilot. It was like Indiana was like a camel or something, storing up sleep like water. Probably Mutt should have been doing the same – he had no idea how long he’d been awake now, but he was so exhausted his eyes were scratchy and everything seemed wavery and unreal. Problem was it was damn freezing in this joint. Something to do with pressure changes at higher altitudes, he was pretty sure. So if it wasn’t the rattle of metal keeping him awake, it was the cold. Great. Mutt couldn’t win for losing.

Finally he gave in and tentatively scooted a bit closer to Indiana, centimeter by centimeter, until their sides were pressed together. Of course the bastard would put off heat like a damned radiator. Mutt bit his lip – probably Indiana’d stay asleep a while longer, right? He’d just move away again before Dr. Jones woke back up.

“You’re gonna want to wake up to see this,” a neutral voice said, and Mutt startled groggily. The first thing he saw was his bike, which was enough to take the edge off when he realized he was in a freaking plane miles away from solid ground, and not only that, he’d also fallen asleep on Dr. Jones’ shoulder like a goddamned infant.

He shoved himself upright, pretty sure he was a deeper red than the paint on his bike at this point, and shook himself a bit.

"Uh," he said, gnawing his lower lip and running a hand over his head. Fuck, his hair was a wreck. "Sorry about, um. Y'know."

"Hm. Well, I'm glad you managed a few hours of sleep, personally. I bet you're even more charming when you're sleep-deprived, and this is going to be enough trouble without you whining through it." Mutt glanced up from dipping his comb in the tin of Dax pomade and glared. Indiana grinned at him, obviously amused with himself, the jerk. "Now look out the window, kid."

Aww, hell. So far Mutt had gotten away with taking quick peeks out of the window and then turning immediately back to the interior of the plane. But Dr. Jones looked expectant, and fuck, Mutt could do this. He quickly smoothed his hair back into place, took a deep breath, stared down ten thousand feet at the plain below. His stomach briefly swam, and he seriously thought he was about to lose those weird tamale-looking things they'd eaten in Cuzco, and then he heard Indiana talking, rambling, really, and managed to focus on the sound until he recognized it as words instead of just noise.

"People have said that there's no way tribes three thousand years ago had the technology to make the geoglyphs, not without seeing them from above and being able to correct their errors, but in reality, I could take you down there today with a bundle of stakes and a whole lot of rope and make a damn fine geoglyph of our own in less than a week. All you have to do is move the darker surface pebbles aside and expose the lighter layer beneath," the professor was saying in a low, rough voice. Mutt finally actually took in what he was seeing, a giant sprawling spider-figure, and a spiral -- had to be hundreds of feet long, and then he saw what was clearly a monkey, and more spirals, and something that almost looked like a shark or a whale or something. Nuts. Completely flipping nuts. How many of the things were there?

"So we're gods now, huh," he said, voice a bit rusty but still steady. He kept looking down at the drawings. It was easy to forget how high up they were for a brief moment, to just concentrate on the awe and the feeling that was kind of like joy, the same feeling he'd had when he'd first really let the throttle lose on an empty highway. He wondered what kind of people they'd been, the ones with the rope and the stakes, trekking across a then-featureless plain and sketching out larger-than-life stories in the gravel and sand.

"We’d seem a lot like gods to the people that made these," Indiana agreed, an odd note in his voice and Mutt abruptly realized he'd clenched his hand on the man's upper arm, and that his grip had relaxed as he'd stared down wonderingly. Now he was basically goddamn caressing the man. He let go with a quick creak of leather, jerking his hand back involuntarily and almost bashing himself in the face with it, like, way to go with the smooth moves, Mutt. He tried to pass it off best he could and gnawed innocently on a hangnail, tasting grease and leather and sweat.

"Yeah?" he said, when he'd finally got his pulse to quit racing like a Model T. "Guess the whole flying thing would be pretty mind-blowing, huh?"

Indiana was staring at him. Fuck, Mutt needed to think of a new topic fast. Get the guy going on a good rant and he'd forget all about this, right? That was how Ox worked, anyway, but Indiana seemed a bit sharper. "So why'd they make these giant-ass drawings anyway? Bored on a weekend? It's like continent-wide graffiti, almost. Think that spiral's a gang sign?"

Indiana eyed him strangely, which was fair since Mutt had definitely started babbling like a lunatic the second he'd opened his mouth again. But he took the bait, so Mutt was counting it a win.

"Actually, to tell the truth, no one knows quite what these drawings represent," Indiana answered, wrinkling his nose as though this pained him. "One theory put forth by von Daiken in the 1800s was that the Nazca lines represent an airfield for alien craft, created by the local people to welcome the extraterrestrials down. Of course, if that were true you’d see a lot more disruption to the figures. Notice how all the lines look clean and intact?” Indiana tapped the glass window and Mutt winced. “The only reason the figures’ve lasted this long is that the climate here, very dry. Not a lot of wind and rain. But imagine a flying saucer coming down.”

“Bet the wind alone would take out half of these,” Mutt agreed, staring out the window at the figure of a strange, spiral-headed man. Yeah, he’d heard of Area 51 and all that, but he’d mostly thought it was a load of crock cooked up by conspiracy theorists and drunk country folk knocked on their asses by a couple fireflies. Still. “I guess aliens might use a different method of combustion, though, right? One we haven’t come up with yet?”

Indiana tilted his head. "True, but it’s difficult to prove either way. There's a couple other theories out there, too -- Paul Kosck and his assistant, Mary Reiche, they were looking into how the drawings tied into irrigation systems, but I think the latest theory links them to astronomical cycles. That spider you saw, the thorax actually lines up perfectly with Orion's belt."

Mutt rubbed his arms -- he was freezing again. He hoped they landed soon. "Yeah, but what does that signify, really? Is it a religious thing or something?"

"Could just be chance," Indiana said, shrugging. "That many drawings, there's a good chance at least one of them would line up to some sort of astrological phenomena. If there is significance, I doubt we'll ever learn it, unless a new find turns up."

Mutt leaned back, stretching. Balls, but he was hungry.

"Maybe that can be your next project," he teased, and Indiana huffed out an amused breath.

"One thing at a time, kid," he said, smirking. "We're landing soon. Your motorbike secure?"

Mutt leapt to his feet -- fuck, landing! Christ, he hated landing almost as much as he hated take-offs -- and started retying knots, ignoring Indiana's eyes on him. Maybe he shouldn't have brought the bike with them. Security blanket wasn't too inaccurate, no matter how much he'd bristled at Indiana's description. But he didn't care, okay, his only family in the world was missing and he'd left the country for the first time since he was a tyke and was stuck out here with a total stranger. He wanted his girl with him.

***

They were here now, really here, in another country, another _continent_. Mutt didn't even know the language, here -- for some reason he'd thought his Spanish would help. He was fluent enough to get by with immigrant workers from Mexico, anyway, but this… The language he'd heard Dr. Jones and that guy using was totally alien. The closest he could remember was that quick Mayan phrase Dr. Jones had uttered in his study, what seemed like a lifetime ago now but was really probably only a day or two.

Quechua, apparently. It was like Dr. Jones had lived his life specifically to fuck with Mutt's mind. Kidnapped by Pancho fucking Villa and learning a dialect of Quechua from one of his riders. Mutt couldn't fucking believe that shit. He couldn’t help but hear a tiny niggling voice in the back of his mind, insisting that he was way out of his league.

He was standing under a different sun, it seemed like. One colder and less friendly than the one they’d left behind, less like the beginning of summer. The seasons got all flip-flopped in the southern hemisphere, yeah, he knew that. But it was one thing to know that intellectually and another entirely to stand in a chill October-feeling breeze when yesterday the days had been lengthening, hot and humid and bright.

"You waiting for anything in particular, kid?" Indiana snapped, and Mutt hurried up, skirting a woman carrying a huge basket on her hip full of what smelled of coffee beans -- funny how you could pick out a smell like that even in a busy market. Coffee stood out, even amidst the peppers and straw and animals and sweat.

"Just wondering what some of this shit is," Mutt said, attempting to start a conversation again. His palms were sweaty in his pockets. A sanitarium. Ox was in a sanitarium. "I mean, those weird potato-looking things, what the hell are they?"

"Potatoes," Indiana said dryly.

"Get out of town," Mutt said, glancing back at the array of brightly colored and oddly shaped fruity-looking things. Some had shiny skin and were curved like boomerangs, and some were withered and bright red, and some were squat and bright lime green.  "No fucking way those are potatoes."

"No?" Indiana said, not meeting his eyes. "I guess you would know, being a motorcycle mechanic. Bet you travel to Peru a lot with that kinda job."

Mutt shot him an annoyed look. He'd known Dr. Jones wasn't going to leave it that conversation where it lay, he'd just known it. ‘Do what you love,’ right. People said shit like that, but only if what you loved happened to be part of the socially accepted norm instead of involving being kicked out of twelve private universities in a row.

Okay, so he'd like to travel more. Fine. Didn't mean he was cut out for being stuck in a classroom for years at a time. And there wasn't a goddamned thing wrong with being a motorcycle mechanic; it was a good job, a challenging job, and maybe it didn't take him all over the globe, but it _had_ taken him all over the country. He’d made it to the Grand Canyon, to the Pacific Ocean, doing odd jobs as a mechanic. Dr. Jones had no right to act like his lifestyle was somehow better just because he had a damned college degree.

After a few seconds, Dr. Jones slowed his pace slightly, glancing back at Mutt as he stomped along through the straw and dust. "We'll make sure you try some of the dishes before you go home,” he said, sounding grumpy. “They've got a lot of different varieties of potato, the Incans. Over three thousand, actually."

Well, hell, you didn’t live nineteen years with Mary Williams and not know a conciliatory gesture when you saw it. Mutt still kinda wanted to shove the professor into a well, but he couldn’t help but deflate slightly.

"Yeah? Three thousand? What the hell do you need with three thousand kinds of potato?" Mutt boggled, shoulder brushing slightly against Indiana's as they came up to a particularly crowded section of the market, chickens roaming the ground at their feet and groups of young children weaving in between the adults with practiced ease. Mutt was jostling every man and woman he tried to ease past, and was getting a lot of bemused or dirty looks for his trouble.

"The blue potatoes are my favorite," Indiana said, shooting Mutt a conspiratorial grin over his shoulder -- I have a secret, and I'm letting you in on it. "Taste like pecans. Fry them up with goat cheese and it's a damn sight better than anything you'll get in the States.”

“Careful, Dr. Jones,” Mutt said, unable to help grinning back. “Sounding a bit un-American, there. Might have to call up our boys in blue and report Communist activity.”

“Mutt, son,” Indiana said, shooting a wizened old man a glare as he fumbled at Indiana’s belt. “I may love America, but I’m not blind to her many faults.”

“One of which is a lack of blue potatoes?”

“Exactly.”

After that, though, they both fell silent for a time – they’d gotten turned around somewhere and had to ask directions to the asylum from one of the nuns they saw roaming the market. Mutt helped her pump water at a well as Indiana charmed her into helpfulness. They left her smiling and nodding appreciatively, shouldering a gigantic load of water onto her shoulders, Mutt fluttering around her uselessly – man, he hated to let a dame walk off carrying that much, even though he knew women could take care of themselves – how many times had his mom said it? Still, it irked him, and apparently Indiana got what he was thinking since he snorted in amusement and informed Mutt that the nun was carrying the water another seven miles, to a family with a sick father up in the hills. Christ have mercy. Mutt would have keeled over after two minutes.

The two men continued on through the dusty market, the winding path lined with stalls and covered overhead by woven reeds and patches of pale sunshine, and then came to a low, sprawling building that looked like it’d started off life as a church and then took a few wrong turns and wound up in a bad part of town.

The asylum was everything Mutt had dreaded, dirty, full of dark and gloom, the plaster curling off the walls in chunks. The head nun seemed almost like she’d been expecting them; maybe working in a nuthouse made life unsurprising in general. She gestured for them to follow her, and Mutt uneasily took a last look at the crowded, dirty scene outside in the courtyard, the bustle of the village beyond, before stepping over the threshold.

Indiana translated for Mutt as they walked, his voice layering over the nun's incomprehensible, creaky words, but what he was saying was just as foreign to Mutt as an Incan dialect.

The Ox had been carried off by men with guns, and somehow the worst thing about that was that Mutt was almost glad, because it meant he didn’t have to see the Ox in here, twisted from someone he knew into a raving lunatic. They passed through a narrow corridor lined with cells on either side, wild-haired men tearing at rusty barred doors and shouting continuously, the same phrase over and over again, their eyes looking through the world Mutt saw to someplace else, someplace worse than this one.

It was so easy to imagine Ox’s face super-imposed over the misery of these poor bastards, to imagine him locked away from clean air and sunshine. The fans on the ceiling were turning lazily, stirring the dust motes that drifted through the occasional shaft of light from the skylights, but the rest of the rooms were all in shadow. Mutt couldn't imagine this place at night. His mind shied away from it.

The hoarse, lunatic shouting followed them down the corridor until it was gradually overpowered by a cheerful melody being played on an old gramophone. Mutt followed Indiana and the nun, dazed and tired and hungry, fuck, how was he still hungry here, surrounded by the smell of human shit and mud and fear?

Indiana didn’t seem to take any mind of it, though, just rambled at Mutt about that conquistador again, the one from Ox's letter. Mutt struggled to pay attention, to follow what he was saying. The older man was so fucking calm, like he was in a lecture hall or something, like he wasn't seeing the shit Mutt was seeing. Just kept talking about birth and cradles, and Mutt wanted to punch him and kiss him all at once -- someone had to keep it together, and apparently it wasn't going to be Mutt. And if it wasn’t going to be Mutt it had to be someone, but he wished he could have just kept it together on his own, fuck.

Okay. Orellana was born in Spain, he came to Peru, he followed the Amazon --

"So what happened to him? Did he make it back to Spain?" Mutt managed to ask, and Indiana shot him a look that had immediately had Mutt on edge, made his skin crawl with the need to do something, anything. Like it was his fault he couldn't translate fucking Mayan-within-another-fucking-dead-whatever. He hadn’t even known who Orellana was until yesterday afternoon.

"No, he disappeared in the Amazon, along with six other men. No one ever found their bodies," Indiana said, like it was common knowledge or something, and then the man turned away, dismissing him and rambling at the nun again. And fuck, now Mutt actually had to go into that room, into Ox’s room.

"What, I’m sorry I don’t know the history of all the Conquistador, okay?" Mutt said, shoving into the professor's space and ignoring everything else around him. "Man, it's a good thing we got you, Mister-Know-It-All-Graverobber. I mean, I'm here, but I’m just a fucking deadweight, right?"

"Back off, junior," Indiana said through clenched teeth, eyes wide with surprise, but he didn't give a fucking inch, why would he, and it just made Mutt wilder, angrier.

"Make me," he hissed back, and God he could see things all over the walls of the room they were in, this dank, crumbling room, and it wasn't Ox's writing, not his Ox. No precise curved lettering, just crude misshapen strokes. Even if Ox had to write with a goddamned rock, he would have spent hours making sure all the t's were crossed perfectly. So this wasn't Ox's room, it couldn't be. "What you got, you dickless old bastard? You talk a good game, but you got anything else to give?"

Mutt sneered and lifted his chin and waited to be pummeled to hell and back. Nothing happened for several long seconds, both of them just staring at each other, and Mutt was considering taking the first swing -- or maybe that was what Indiana wanted, maybe he was that big of a prick and wanted to show Mutt just how worthless he was, that he wasn't worth even shoving down or defending against. And then Mutt blinked and lowered his chin a fraction, nervous, because Indiana was smiling.

Not a normal smile, but something dark and curling, and without taking his eyes off Mutt's he called out to the waiting nun outside in a rasping foreign tongue and Mutt was suddenly not as sure it was a good idea to provoke this guy.

Mutt felt even worse about his decision when the rusty iron door clanged shut and there was the soft sound of footsteps padding away. Alone. Not even a nun around to hear him scream.

"Say that again," Indiana suggested calmly, and without consciously thinking about it Mutt retreated a step. Indiana just smiled wider and Mutt's pulse thumped in his neck, like something was trapped underneath his skin. Fuck, if the guy was gonna slug him, he should just do it already.

"Say _what_ again?" Mutt snarled, and oh, look, there was the wall behind him. Now would obviously be a good time to shut up, but his stupid mouth kept running on without him. "That you talk a good game? That you can't get it up without a pulley? What?"

He squeezed his eyes shut, felt rough cold stone beneath his fingers, the outlines of a gritty carving, and he just wanted to beat his fists against the wall and scream or fling himself at Indiana and slam him to the ground or go to sleep on the hard floor and wake up at home with Ox and his mom in the kitchen, squabbling over the last cup from the coffee pot. He'd just wanted to see Indiana as fucked up and broken as he was, as messy and unsure, but instead the guy just got calmer and more amused and god_dammit_, Mutt hated being backed into a corner like this. He snarled and lashed out, took a wild swing at the man’s goddamned smirking face.

Indiana caught his wrist easily and slammed it up above his head, leaned in close enough that the brim of his hat was jabbing Mutt in the goddamned forehead.

“And also, you smell,” Mutt spat out, trying to get himself free and only having this other hand caught for his troubles. Man, there was no way he was this bad at wrestling, he could usually hold his own in a fight, even though he was scrawny. But he was just so damned tired and Indiana’s hands were the only thing holding him up, practically, and anyway, there was no place to go.

"Charming," Indiana drawled. “You smell like the ass-end of an airplane yourself.”

Mutt glared impotently.

“Lemme go, asshole,” he said, and contemplated being a total loser and kneeing the guy in the balls. Unmanly, sure, but maybe it’d be deeply satisfying for a few minutes before Indiana tossed him off a cliff or something.

It was like talking to an especially annoying wall. Indiana didn’t even acknowledge Mutt had spoken.

 "Let’s get one thing clear, kid,” Indiana said tightly, and Mutt stared up at him, fuming. “I? Have absolutely no trouble getting it up. Also…” He tilted his head and looked at Mutt consideringly, like he was a wall carving or an encrypted letter or something. “I thought you were just yanking my chain, but you’ve been asking for this for days, haven’t you?”

“Huh?” Mutt said inelegantly and then sucked in a startled breath when Indiana stepped forward and squeezed Mutt’s wrists and fuck, they were touching, and Indiana’s leg was rubbing against Mutt’s dick and he was going to _know_.

“Yeah, you want this,” Indiana said smugly and Mutt immediately retorted, voice wobbling alarmingly, “Fuck you, old man.”

“If you ask nicely,” Indiana said, and Mutt had thought all those dopey cartoons with people’s eyes popping out of their sockets and their jaws dropping open in shock had been an exaggeration, but he had a sneaking suspicion he strongly resembled one right now.

"Kid, last chance. Tell me no and I’ll back off. You can take a swing, whatever. I’ll buy you a beer later, we’ll forget anything ever happened.” Mutt wavered, wanted to both move forward and retreat back even farther, and so he wound up not moving at all. He bit his lip and tried to catch his breath and then time fractured a little as Indiana reached up a hand and stroked his thumb over Mutt's chin, just below his mouth, and he was staring down at Mutt's face intently.

“Yeah, well,” Mutt said. “Let’s, uh, examine our options. What happens if I say yes?”

Indiana leaned in, eyes half-lidded, smirk still on his goddamned face, and he’d somehow maneuvered his hands so that he had Mutt’s wrists pinned to the wall in one while the other trailed down Mutt’s side and underneath his shirt, and oh, fuck, was toying with the button of his jeans.

“Guess you’ll have to find out,” he breathed into Mutt’s ear and then there was a sharp sting of teeth and yes, fuck yes, a hand on his cock, dry and callused and fucking perfect. Mutt writhed up into the touch, screwing his eyes shut and panting.

“Quiet down, kid, don’t want to scandalize the nuns,” Indiana said into the skin of his neck, biting down on a tendon and Mutt closed his mouth on a groan.

“Oh, fuck, your hand,” he managed and arched his back. God, he needed this, he wanted, and he tried to yank Indiana in, knock off that hat and drag him down for a kiss, something, but he was still pinned to the wall and Indiana was jerking him relentlessly, long slow steady pulls and it’d been so long and it felt–

“Yeah, that’s it, just like that,” Indiana said, and Mutt opened his eyes and Indiana was watching him, intent and dangerous and Mutt tried to lean up for a kiss and couldn’t, couldn’t reach. Then Indiana said, “Now,” and Mutt came, almost sobbing.

Indiana was practically purring he was so smug, cat that got the fucking cream didn’t even describe it, but Mutt was too blissed out to care.

“What about you?” he managed, making an aborted gesture towards Indiana’s pants, and then froze. Indiana  grinned at him, smile strangely shark-like.

“Oh, kid,” he said, letting go of Mutt’s wrists, finally, and sliding a hand around Mutt’s waist, running it down over his ass and jerking him closer. “I am nowhere near done with you yet.”

 


End file.
